How to reduce the number of objects created in Scala?

Question

I\'m programming a computer graphics application in Scala which uses a RGB class to return the color at a point in the image. As you can imagine, the function which return the c

Answer 1

In terms of memory friendliness, the most efficient solution is to store the complete color information just in one Int. As you have mentioned correctly, the color information requires just three bytes, so the four bytes of Int are enough. You could encode and decode the RGB information from one Int by using bit operations:

def toColorCode(r: Int, g: Int, b: Int) = r << 16 | g << 8 | b

def toRGB(code: Int): (Int, Int, Int) = (
  (code & 0xFF0000) >> 16, 
  (code & 0x00FF00) >> 8, 
  (code & 0x0000FF)
)